*Trigger warning: conversation about suicide and evil spirits. Read somewhere safe and definitely turn the page to the next chapter for Cary Douglas to do some good juju for Jon and Kurt!*

{Kurt}

Jon took a turn to drive while Kurt tore into the snacks. "Mmm, the rainbow tastes like sugar and citric acid," Kurt said, popping Skittles in his mouth three at a time. "Hold out your hand, White." Jon obliged, and Kurt dumped a sugary rainbow in his palm. "I think red is best but you let me know."

Jon thoughtfully ate one Skittle at a time, examining the colour before he put them in his mouth. "Green," he said softly.

"Oh, perfect," Kurt said. "Because now you can have my greens and I can have your reds." He picked through the package, handing Jon green Skittles one at a time. "Why don't you cry, White? Can you tell me that story?"

Jon's forehead wrinkled as he chewed on a Skittle. "I've been trying to think how to start. I've never--told this story to anyone. I think my dad knows? We never talk about it. Maybe he thinks I don't remember." He said the last very softly.

With the prairie dark pressing all around their car, Kurt felt as if they were the last people alive on earth. "Green all gone," he said sadly, poking through the candies.

Jon cracked his water bottle and took a long drink. "What do you have that's salty category, Visser?"

"Mm," Kurt reached between his long legs to dig out the raw, salted almonds he thought would be just the thing for his partner. "Here you go, love." He tore the top of the plastic sleeve, pouring out a little handful to pass to Jon.

Jon ate almonds one at a time as he quietly unfolded his story. "So, um. This is what I remember of this day. December 11. We left the hospital. I didn't hug Judah. It was my mom--my dad stayed the night. And um. I couldn't stop crying in the tub. I thought I was, like, drowning in my tears. And my mom was crying too." Jon paused, as if he was sorting through the three identical almonds in his free hand. "We were a mess. Anyways. I guess she tucked me in and I cried myself to sleep.

"The next morning--" For the first time Jon's voice hitched, and he wiped his empty hand on his leg. "December 12th," Jon said. "She didn't get me up. My mom. She didn't tap on my door to say 'breakfast time.' And I think I didn't remember what happened. You know when you wake up and it takes a minute for the previous day to hit you? So I went out to pee or whatever and my--"

Jon's voice dried up and his hands tightened on the wheel. He cleared his throat softly. "My mom is on the floor. Of the bathroom. Like she's sleeping." His eyes touched the dark of the rear-view. "And I wish I didn't remember this with such fucking clarity."

Kurt twisted his hands together, heart aching. He wanted to stop this story, just push it back into the realm of infinite possibilities and find another way for this day to have unfolded for his partner's little self.

Pressing his lips in a hard line, Jon took a breath and went on. "My mom was breathing but she wouldn't wake up. So I--went and got the big phone from the kitchen. And punched in the number we learned to call in kindergarten if there's an emergency and no grownup. And I don't think the operator knew how young I was. Because I was so calm telling her what happened.

"So she says--someone's coming but she needs my help. And tells me how to save my mom. How to, you know, put her in a recovery position. I learned all this shit in first aid class later." Jon's hands twisted around the wheel. "And I can't do it. I put this big phone down on the sink and try...but my mom is a lot bigger than me and--it's scaring me how, like, heavy and floppy she is. And her mouth doesn't look right."

Jon took a slow, unsteady breath, his forehead deeply creased. Kurt took that breath with him, his chest vibrating like a struck chord. The stocky little boy with hair curling against his freckled cheeks was in Kurt's mind, way too small to shift a full sized grown up, and he brushed tears away to keep his eyes on Jon.

His partner gave his shoulders a little shake. "I want to cry and I know I can't. My mom needs me to do this right now. So I figure out how to get a little leverage with my feet against the tub and I push on her hard and I roll her over like the lady said so she would be safe. And I pick up the phone again and she says--look around if there's anything in the room that might be the cause. Don't touch anything, just look."

Jon stopped, a muscle bunching in his jaw. "I don't know, I guess mom had sleeping pills? I couldn't read the label on the bottle. The words were too big." He tapped the cigarette package against his leg and drew a smoke out with his lips, making the package disappear again without taking his hand off the wheel. With a 'crinkle,' he lit the smoke off the cigarette lighter on the dash of the car.

Leaning against the door, Jon cracked the window and his words were quiet in the midst of the rush of air. "I don't know what happened next exactly. My dad was there?" He blinked at the lines disappearing under their car as he pulled on the cigarette. "I remember him carrying her out." The words were hazy and blue. "Maybe that was another time?" He frowned, waving smoke away from his face.

Kurt hummed a small, hurt noise. "Jon. Your mom. Was she okay after that? She's so--she seems so grounded now."

Jon nodded. "Yeah she is." He sucked the cigarette to its filter and flicked it spinning like a mini-firework into the night. Exhaling, Jon shoved his shoulders back in the seat. "She got a diagnosis for clinical depression and her meds really work to--keep her out of the deep. But I'm still careful. Especially this time of year. To take care of her, and dad."

The window sealed closed and the car was quiet except for Kurt's music and the sound of Kurt blowing his nose. "You still haven't cried." Kurt's voice was small.

Jon twitched his shoulders in a shrug. "I broke it. Crying is hard now." He glanced over, smiling with his eyes. "Why I love your tears so much, Kurt. I'll only admit this one time but--I love crying with you. I missed it. When I got busy with all the grown up stuff the little tears I had just...dried up for a couple years there."

The coffee was wearing off; Kurt leaned into Jon's body, ignoring the gearshift shoved into his ribs for the comfort of hearing the thud of Jon's heart under his ear and smelling the tobacco in his hoodie. Glancing down, Jon tucked Kurt's hair behind his ear and brushed the tears off Kurt's face, then kept his arm around him, humming quietly to stay awake while the road unspooled underneath them.

Kurt replayed the stories Jon had told him, folding them tenderly into himself. There was a gap, a dark little space that made his stomach drop when he found it. "Jon?" he asked softly.

"Mm-hm?"

"When your dad took your mom to the hospital. Who looked after you?"

There was a pause and he literally felt Jon shiver and heard his heartbeat step into double-time. "I don't know?"

Kurt straightened to look at him. "What do you mean you don't know?"

Jon rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist and Kurt glimpsed the cut, angry and red under the cuff of his jacket. "I hid in my room. I was afraid. I thought the hungry things that took Judah and got my mom were coming for me. I heard them calling my name."

Kurt's body tightened and all the hair on his arms stood up under his jumper. "Well that's the scariest damn thing I've ever heard," he said gruffly.

Jon's throat moved and he pushed the heels of his hands against the wheel. "Yeah it wasn't great," he whispered. A truck blew by them, going the other way, the force of it's passing shaking their car.

Kurt frowned at the dark, putting the pieces together. He felt like they had lurched sideways into a Stephen King novel where shit like this could be real. And who even knew anymore, with Jon saying cuts on his body miraculously healed and Grandma Visser getting big as the universe in his mind and filling him with love and peace.

If there was a light side, of course there was a dark side.

"You said the sharps were calling your name," Kurt said. "Same voice?"

Jon shot him a look. "I guess," he said slowly. "It feels the same. Like, um. It wants me to die. To hook me and reel me into the dark until I'm. Gone." His voice stretched thin. "I usually try not to listen."

Kurt scrubbed his hands through his hair. His scalp was prickling again.

"Sounds really dumb when I say it out loud," Jon said, trying to laugh.

"It sounds scary as hell," Kurt said. "And you have a cut on your wrist that's no joke. You hear that voice right now?"

Jon tucked his chin into his jacket. "I won't, Kurt," he said softly. "I said I won't."

"That's not a no," Kurt said.

Their tires crunched gravel as Jon pulled over and slid the drivers' seat back with a jerk. "Switch me spots," he said in a soft, tight voice. "I'm not driving a divided highway like this."

Kurt clambered over him and dropped into the drivers' seat. Once the car was silent, the whole night felt enormous around them. When was the damn sunrise already? "So I'm right?" Kurt asked.

"I always hear it," Jon's voice was pressed almost to a whisper. "Do you not have that? You don't ever think--"

"No, I don't," Kurt snapped. He took a deep breath, combing through his mind. "When I'm cornered all I hear is fucking--hold on Kurt and live through to the other side. Nothin' in me wants to die and I've been through some bad shit I'd rather forget."

Jon balled up with his boots on the glove box, rubbing shaking hands over his face. "Don't see me; don't find me," he whispered, and Kurt's stomach dropped to his feet freezing in his boots. "Don't see me; don't see me."

Abruptly Jon showed him his teeth, his eyes black with pupil. "It's not real, Kurt. I was just a scared kid. It was just--a nightmare I had or something. Enough shit had just happened--don't you think I had reason to be scared?"

Jon's contorted face was scaring him, and Kurt put his hand on the back of Jon's neck hoping one of his partner's normal expressions would return. Jon's arms flew up defensively, knocking Kurt's hand away and he balled into the corner of the car, his fists pulled tight to his face, watching Kurt with those blown-out pupils. "Do not fuck with me right now."

Kurt's face crumpled. "I'm not. You're having a...panic attack or something."

"Just fucking drive," Jon said. He didn't take his eyes off Kurt and he didn't move off the door.

Kurt made a small, frightened hum, and reached for his phone. "I'm just going to find us a new playlist, love," he whispered. Every horror storyline was alarming in his mind; he needed a priest or shaman to do some good ju-ju right now. He rapidly texted Douglas.

<ARE YOU UP>

<JON IS F'D>

<DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DO AN EXORCISM>

{Jon}

Fear clamoured in his brain and the thunder of his heart shook his whole body. He barely held the thread of rational thought, telling himself to breathe. It was just Kurt. That was his partner's familiar scruffy jaw, the light from his phone making deep shadows out of the lines around his mouth as his thumbs flew over the screen. It was not..something bigger than him. Something dark. Something incorporeal and fluid as the night around their car.

Jon kicked out, knocking the phone out of Kurt's hand. "Drive," he snapped. "Drive away. We can't stay here, let's go."

Kurt flashed him a look, shaking out the fingers his boot had impacted, scooping the phone up off the floor. "Simmer down, White or I'm putting you in the trunk to cool off," he growled back.

He glanced at the phone, then pulled back onto the highway in a spray of gravel.

"Tell me about Sunday morning, Jon." Kurt's voice was even but his hands were white knuckled on the wheel. Jon could hardly hear past the noise of his own breathing and the rush of blood through his ears. "When we did the thing with the bread and the wine."

"Communion," Jon said tightly.

"Yeah. What happens there? You say it's Jesus' body and His blood--"

A shiver rocked Jon's whole body and he thought he might need to throw up.

"Is it really?" Kurt asked. "Does it turn into Jesus when you say that? Or is it always Jesus? Or does the prayer make it Jesus' body and blood?"

"Stop saying Jesus." The words felt big and loud, stretching his mouth wide.

Kurt hunched his shoulders, his hands tightening on the wheel. "But Jesus is your guy, Jon," he said quietly. "You asked him in your heart forever ago. Isn't that what we said when we were little kids?"

Jon buried his face in his knees, freezing, his jaw locked shut.

"And you take Jesus' body and blood into your body every week--I watch you do it. He's inside you, right? Isn't that how it works? You're not on your own against the world; it isn't just you taking care of yourself. Jesus is taking care of you right now. That's what you believe. That's your life Jon."

Kurt's voice looped around his chest, pulling on him. Listening, Jon became aware of his own fingers, gripping his sweaty hair. He could feel his chest heaving in and out. Pushing his breath out slow, Jon found his back against the uncomfortable shape of the car door.

He unclenched his fingers, opening them as he shivered over and over.

He crept across the front seat, nudging his head under Kurt's arm, rubbing his face into Kurt's sweater and worming his arms around the warmth of his partner's body.

"Hey," Kurt whispered. "You back, Jon?"

Jon nodded against him, still trembling.

Kurt's hand touched the back of his neck tentatively, and Jon made a soft sound. He had been so frightened--now he was frightened in a different way, realizing how that fear had gripped him and used him almost like his body didn't belong to him anymore.

"Something is wrong with me." His voice was frayed.

"Yeah, I know," Kurt said gently. He pressed Jon's head against his chest and Jon felt him take a big, unsteady breath. "We're going to get it sorted, love. After the sun's come up. It's way too dark right now to be talking about nightmares."

2488 words.

*A caveat on these chapters: Jon's mental health is complex and it's early days in his mental health journey here. As I drafted this outline I debated whether this is the year Jon wakes up to the real possibility that he shares his mom's depression and looks for treatment, or if we were first going to play with a more fantastical storyline a la Mr. King, and lift off some unclean spirits whose voices have plagued Jon since his brother's death. The latter felt more fun to me at the time? But maybe my readers will disagree.

On Saturday I'll want all your thoughts about how this little plot development sat with you! Be well lovelies and keep a light on at bedtime <333*